$800,000? A rare case of fiscal disability in Solana Beach

Years ago, I wrote a breezy column about a fight over a fence in Rancho Santa Fe that was running up a million bucks in fees.

But that’s the Ranch, a fertile field for the humor of wretched excess.

The Solana Beach School District, on the other hand, has been ordered to pay more than $800,000 of our money for what appear to be outrageous attorney fees.

Not funny at all.

The catalyst for the district’s hapless lawsuit — the forced payment of $6,100 tuition for a private preschool for an autistic 4-year-old — comes off as a paper cut allowed to turn into gangrene.

Instead of swallowing a minor defeat, the district undertook what it saw as a test case to defend the quality of its special-ed program compared to a private school the parents argued was better suited to their child’s needs. The courts sided with the parents.

Bad outcome for the district, but vindication for a persistent family that has long since moved to Utah and watched the child bloom into an 11-year-old who’s successful by any mainstream standard.

Reading the story, I was stuck on one question.

Why do we pay to school a 4-year-old? Isn’t kindergarten the starting point for free public education?

Well, I must have been asleep in 1986 when the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was expanded to mandate free appropriate education for special-ed students beginning at age 3.

I did not know this.

Before the ‘70s, school was brutal: “Slow” kids were far from special.

Today, special education is a world of Byzantine complexity. With 3- and 4-year-olds in the mix, assessments have to be as much subjective art as science.

Starting at their child’s third birthdays, parents can enroll qualified children in a free preschool geared to their needs, period.

What’s more, these parents have a right to an arbitrator if they’re unhappy, an avenue not open to parents of regular public students.

Utopia? Not quite.

Every few years, we read about the spiking costs and the growing number of children with disabilities.

Solana Beach’s attorney tells me special ed is “cannibalizing” school budgets, a loaded but common word.

In the end, the Solana Beach tale is likely an outlier, a counter to stories of parents enrolling their children in Maine boarding schools and sticking districts with huge bills.

Within these extremes, however, real money gets spent, lots of it, and not all of it’s public money.

Empowered parents, worried their child might not develop to his or her potential, fight for the best customized education possible — especially at age 3 and 4 when developmental gains can be so crucial.